Conference is \"like a home\"

Zoe Ryan
|
Nov. 10, 2011
NCR Today

"It's kinda like a home, visiting home" is how Jackie Starkey of New York City described attending the Call To Action national conference in Milwaukee Nov. 4-6. "There's a great warmth here, and a great sense of community."

Watch the video below to here more comments from Call to Action.

Call To Action, a Catholic church reform group based in Chicago, holds an annual conference around the first weekend of November.

Call To Action is a national organization with 25,000 national members, and its 53 local chapters throughout the U.S. have members in addition to national members, according to its website. The national organization was founded after the 1976 U.S. bishops' national Call to Action conference in Detroit.

The weekend revolves around keynote speakers, exhibits, workshops, presentations and a liturgy. More than 2000 people attended this year's conference.

The theme at this year's conference was "Living the Gospel of Love."

Divine Word Missionaries Brother Brian of Techny, Ill., said at the conference he finds "a group of people who envision a church where everyone can sit around the table, not just a given few."

This year being her first Call To Action conference, Marie-Louise Thurton from Toronto, Canada, looked forward to connecting to the vibrancy of the Call To Action community "as well as try to do some organizing to connect Canadian progressive Catholics to the wider church movement."

Marcus Borg, a canon theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Ore., was one of the four keynote speakers.

After listening to Borg, Erin Lorenz of Bowie, Md., said, "Him talking about the Bible and how it relates to economic injustices and -- oh my gosh, that was blowing my mind."